Additional Resources

Forward thinking companies have recognized the benefits of setting public greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction goals for years. Setting aggressive GHG reduction goals can galvanize reduction efforts at a company and often leads to the identification of many additional reduction opportunities. An aggressive GHG target also can help garner senior management attention and increase funding for internal GHG reduction projects. Additionally, corporate targets can encourage innovation, improve employee morale, and help in the recruiting and retention of qualified employees.

While companies have generally been lauded by their customers and shareholders for taking proactive steps to address climate change, there have been few efforts to evaluate the extent to which these public corporate GHG goals represent actual GHG reductions as opposed to business-as-usual changes expected for their sector. In an effort to provide companies with a transparent and publicly available benchmarking resource to help evaluate and establish new or existing GHG goals, EPA's Corporate GHG Goal Evaluation Model is now available for download on the web.

Although the model was designed to be used by corporations, it can be used by some types of non-corporate entities, such as office-based entities, who have an applicable North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) code available for selection within the model parameters (see Appendix 1 of the Update Process Manual). Non-corporate entities should read the model's documentation to ensure the resource is suitable for their GHG Goal Setting objectives.

The EPA Corporate GHG Goal Evaluation Model

The EPA Corporate GHG Goal Evaluation Model was initially created under EPA's Climate Leaders program as a tool for projecting business-as-usual GHG intensity improvements in order to assess GHG reduction goals set by companies participating in the program. The model incorporates best available forecast data on energy consumption and economic production output from a variety of publicly available sources and has been updated and enhanced with BLS data released in 2013 and the most recent EIA energy price datasets. It can be accessed, along with three accompanying documents, by visiting the web links below.

Goal Evaluation Model Updated August 2014! What's New?

Projections now run to 2022 (the previous version of the Goal Evaluation Model projected to 2018).

BLS historical data updated and now dates back to 1993 (through 2012).

Sectors within the BLS dataset have been updated and in some cases modified. Also, the new naming convention for the sectors improves readability for users.

Historical and future forecast price data have been updated by using the most recent source data obtained from three EIA energy price datasets: MECS, SEDS, and AEO.

The base year for the currency values used in the model has changed from 2000 to 2012. Thus, values of economic output by sector are now expressed in 2012 dollars instead of 2000 dollars.

The EPA Corporate GHG Goal Evaluation Model (Analytica)(9.3M)
Purpose: To provide companies with a transparent and publicly available benchmarking resource to help evaluate and establish new or existing GHG goals that go beyond "business as usual" for their individual sectors.